


Your Smile is a Drug

by missdeviant



Category: The OC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-12
Updated: 2004-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdeviant/pseuds/missdeviant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan drinks and smokes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Smile is a Drug

**Author's Note:**

> for [](http://torchthisnow.livejournal.com/profile)[**torchthisnow**](http://torchthisnow.livejournal.com/), who had an unfriendly encounter with a bottle of vodka last night.
> 
> Hope this makes you feel better, babe.
> 
> Title and quote from Patrick Park, whose CD *rocketh*, and which I may not have discovered without a certain fictional boy who likes to stand on coffee carts. Pull a Rooney and BUYHISCDBUYITNOW! 

_You’re a tongue tied talker with sleepy eyes  
Who always gets the last word  
You’re not broken. _

 

Ryan doesn’t usually drink like this. Back when he was in Chino, it was Trey and his friends who hung around the sides of loose-shingled houses, out of view of the black and white squad cars that trolled the streets, their grease-stained fingers wrapped around the necks of whiskey bottles.

He takes another swig of the bottle clutched in his hand, liquid sloshing as his arm flops limply to its place at his side. He feels his stomach clench and wills it into accepting the warm mouthful. For balance, he's got his back pressed up against the smooth poolhouse exterior that has never seen so much as a loose chip of paint, much less a broken shingle.

Tonight, for the first time in ages, thoughts about leaving had flitted through his mind like smoke from a cigarette. But this time he really has no where to go. So he compromises. Being outside feels less like their world, and more like his, and even though he knows it's bullshit, he doesn't want to get wasted under *their* roof.

Ryan's hand fumbles its way for the dozenth time that night into the pocket of his jacket, fingers catching on the zipper before his fist closes around the stale pack of cigarettes he’d kept secreted away since arriving in Newport.

Old habits die hard.

The blue-orange flame lights and sputters out twice between his clumsy fingers before the tip of the cigarette blazes in the night. He takes another sip of the bottle, absently dropping the lighter on the ground where he stands. Leans, because he's pretty sure the wall is supporting him almost as much as his feet are

Ryan knows he’s drunk, because the whiskey stopped burning a long time ago.

It’s his chest that still aches.

In Chino, getting drunk was easy. Liquor bottles waited, lined up on dusty shelves, living room end tables. In Newport, everything comes in fancy crystal cut glass, and people pass out delicately in bathrooms, instead of landing heavily in the middle of crowded rooms.

In Newport, it’s not called getting drunk, or shitfaced, or plowed, or tanked. It’s called “having a good night.” Newport loves its euphemisms that way.

But the town doesn't control him any more than Sandy or Kirsten or Marissa or even Theresa do, and Ryan is out to get shitfaced. He’s pretty sure he’s almost there as his eyes inspect the bottle, which will never make its way back into the liquor cabinet without suspicion. This is the good stuff, straight from Sandy and Kirsten’s stash, not the cheap bottles of Cutty Sark and Seagram’s 7 his mom favored.

Taking the bottle was the lesser crime of the evening, by far, and worth whatever lecture Sandy might give him in the morning. Ryan’s not worried about who he’s going to piss off anymore, because he’s pretty sure he’s fucked up big time this time. And he didn’t even punch Luke, or Oliver, or some other goddamn rich kid who didn’t know what it was like to have to question the moves of everyone around him in order to survive.

The liquor in his system, numbing his fingertips and warming the back of his neck, makes it easy to blame Seth. For the way spread his long limbs over Ryan’s bed or chair, morning after morning, watching with sleepy eyes over a cup of coffee as Ryan pulled on button down shirts and shook droplets of water out of his hair. For the way he pushed a kitchen chair no more than two inches away from Ryan’s as they ate breakfast, how he leaned over Ryan’s shoulder to scan the black and white type of the comics page, his breath warm on Ryan’s ear.

Seth made Ryan stop questioning things, and that’s where Ryan went wrong.

Ryan stopped watching with wary eyes and allowed himself to get sidetracked. Sucked in. Blindsided. He won't say seduced, because boys from Chino didn't get seduced. Especially not by the way Seth’s muscles moved and flexed under his too tight t-shirts, his elbow in Ryan’s side, even the way he would never stop talking, even when he should have shut up fifteen pages of _Kavalier and Clay_ earlier.

After months of watching, he thought he knew Seth.

Tonight tells him he was all wrong. Because it’s three hours after he ran his hands up Seth’s back, nuzzled into the curl of his neck, feeling soft cotton and Seth’s body give against him. It’s three hours after he laced his fingers through Seth’s and felt him squeeze in return.

It’s three hours since Ryan locked onto Seth's gaze, felt his lower lip trembling as he smelled Seth’s sweat mingled with the chlorine from the pool. It’s three hours since Seth broke away with a spurt of inane babble and bolted for his room.

It’s three hours and half a bottle of 80 proof anesthetic later. It’s only when the outside house lights flicker and he stands in shadow that he starts to think that maybe numbing away his troubles, like Marissa and his mom before him, wasn’t such a good idea.

Since coming to Newport, Ryan has stopped running. Instead he squats and rubs out his cigarette on the hard concrete, wavering to his feet as a smiling and barefoot Seth appears and crosses the patio towards the poolhouse. And as Seth's hand reaches out, taking the bottle and setting it gently on the ground before his lips blur as they come in close and press against Ryan's, Ryan suddenly realizes there are probably still some things from this night that he won’t regret in the morning.


End file.
